NBC has record sweeps...and not in a good way.

If NBC scraps their lineup, they'd be starting from scratch with completely unproven shows. It would be like a baseball team firing all their players and then going out on the street and filling their roster with 25 random guys who have never played at all.

I think a long hiatus is fine for a show like NCIS or a sitcom, but for a serialized show, it's a recipe for disaster. You'd think they'd have learned their lesson when they tried this with Lost and then with Heroes. People forget what's going on, and they either have moved on to something else or get bored after a few episodes because they have lost interest.

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Definitely agree with this. These long breaks are killers; half the time for the shows the other half for fans.

We need to kill the baseball analogy, because TV networks don't have minor league shows in development just waiting to get called up to the bigs. If NBC scraps their lineup, they'd be starting from scratch with completely unproven shows. It would be like a baseball team firing all their players and then going out on the street and filling their roster with 25 random guys who have never played at all.

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I disagree with that last part. To switch the analogy a bit to football, it'd be more like firing the entire team and replacing them with drafts. You might end up with some hall-of-fame all-stars.... or you might end up with some draft duds. In other words, if they were to do it, it would be gambling, pure and simple. They'd have to hope whatever they can buy or develop is better than what they've got now.

The problem with NBC right now is (and now I'm switching back to a baseball metaphor) their "minor leagues," the shows they have in development, aren't much better than what they have now.

I disagree with that last part. To switch the analogy a bit to football, it'd be more like firing the entire team and replacing them with drafts. You might end up with some hall-of-fame all-stars.... or you might end up with some draft duds. In other words, if they were to do it, it would be gambling, pure and simple. They'd have to hope whatever they can buy or develop is better than what they've got now.

The problem with NBC right now is (and now I'm switching back to a baseball metaphor) their "minor leagues," the shows they have in development, aren't much better than what they have now.

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OK, to continue the draft analogy, NBC would have the last pick in every round, since talent would definitely prefer to be on CBS, FOX, or ABC rather than NBC. There simply aren't enough viewers on NBC right now.

As for NBC's "minor leagues," the success to failure ratio of network TV development is crazy. Every year, the networks read hundreds of scripts, make dozens of pilots, order 8-12 pilots to series, and are lucky if 1-2 of those gets renewed for a second season. Based on those stats, there is no reason to believe that anything NBC has in development is even as good as what they're currently airing.

We know they held it so it could remain paired with The Voice. The question is, why did they choose to keep The Voice off the air during February sweeps? Fox seems to have to problem making Idol last through both Feb. and May sweeps.

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I'm guessing it was more of a timing issue than anything else. I believe The Voice is the first singing show since the first season of American Idol to try to do two cycles in a single season. They probably had to wait until March to accommodate the schedules of the four mentors.

I disagree with that last part. To switch the analogy a bit to football, it'd be more like firing the entire team and replacing them with drafts. You might end up with some hall-of-fame all-stars.... or you might end up with some draft duds. In other words, if they were to do it, it would be gambling, pure and simple. They'd have to hope whatever they can buy or develop is better than what they've got now.

The problem with NBC right now is (and now I'm switching back to a baseball metaphor) their "minor leagues," the shows they have in development, aren't much better than what they have now.

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Well we don't know if they are better or worse. What we do know is that based on their history the last few years, there have been some critically acclaimed shows that have never gotten off the ground simply because people aren't watching NBC. CBS throws out basically the same police procedural over and over again, and they get ratings. NBC could throw out the same exact show and it would tank. It's a tough spot. How do you get people to watch?

I'm a hockey fan....6 or 7 years ago, the Rangers would put out the same crappy retreads year after year, and it just got boring and nobody wanted to watch. Finally they got smart, and got rid of most of these old retreads who they KNEW they were going to continue to stink with and brought up a bunch of kids. Now, they were interesting to watch to see how the new blood would do. You knew some would be washouts, but some would be stars. But you knew that what they had before was the same old crap and wasn't going to improve. There was an excitement around the team that wasn't there for years. That's my reasoning about NBC killing their schedule. Create a buzz, make some noise, do something risky. Because what they are doing now isn't working all that well.

BTW, NBC won the fall sweeps, but would they have if you took away SNF? The Voice? I doubt it. In fact, I doubt they would have been that much better than they are now.

OK, to continue the draft analogy, NBC would have the last pick in every round, since talent would definitely prefer to be on CBS, FOX, or ABC rather than NBC. There simply aren't enough viewers on NBC right now.

As for NBC's "minor leagues," the success to failure ratio of network TV development is crazy. Every year, the networks read hundreds of scripts, make dozens of pilots, order 8-12 pilots to series, and are lucky if 1-2 of those gets renewed for a second season. Based on those stats, there is no reason to believe that anything NBC has in development is even as good as what they're currently airing.

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Or they could have a run like ABC had a couple of years ago where lots clicked. Could it be worse than what they have now?

I'm guessing it was more of a timing issue than anything else. I believe The Voice is the first singing show since the first season of American Idol to try to do two cycles in a single season. They probably had to wait until March to accommodate the schedules of the four mentors.

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There's a lot of concern out there that the 2 cycles of The Voice will burn it out with the viewers. NBC betting so hard on it being the torch bearer could really blow up in its face, and that seems to be what just happened.

Hoffer may be referring to Firewall & Iceberg (iTunes link), by Dan Fienberg and Alan Sepinwall of Hitfix.com. Thought I would mention it even if that's not the one Hoffer means, because I'd recommend it to anyone who likes insightful TV criticism and talk. You do need to have a high tolerance for lame patter and poor sound quality, but the core of the podcast is really good.

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Actually, I was talking about the IGN podcast Channel Surfing. They just seem to talk about the kinds of shows I watch. Stuff on HBO, Showtime, sitcoms, etc... There isn't any talk of procedurals or reality or whatever else I'm not into.

I also like their movie podcast Keepin it Reel. There again they talk about movies I watch, like super heroes and action and etc...

IGN is probably aimed at a younger audience and I have a child-like mind when it comes to TV and movies.

I'll give that Firewall podcast a try. I listen to way too many video game and tech podcasts. I could use more TV and movie podcasts.

In fact, if Revolution is going to have 22 episodes this season, and it starts on March 25 and airs one episode per week, there will be three episodes left to air after May sweeps and the regular TV season ends. That's simply poor strategic planning.

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That's WAY beyond poor strategic planning. That's, like, USA Network strategy (where they deliberately try to put on new content when everyone else is in reruns). This works well for USA because it's a cable channel, but you CANNOT run a network that way. The network schedules and sweeps times are based on a knowledge of when people watch televison and when they're too busy doing other stuff. In the summer, people get busy with graduations, weddings, vacations, and general summer-type stuff that is likely to disrupt the faithful weekly routine of sitting down to watch a show. Similarly, people are usually too busy over the holidays with family events, travel, and such.

USA managed to carve a niche for itself by having fun, fairly fluffly programing that people could watch during these "dead" zones. Occasionally, the networks have experimented with putting a show on in these slots to get attention and then moving it to the "regular" schedule once it's established (Fox did this with The O.C. and Glee both. I think WB does it pretty regularly, but I don't follow any shows on the WB well enough to say for certain that this is the case. ) But realistically, even if NBC tried to compete with USA at this point, quite frankly, USA has better programming.

So this leaves us with the question: What the heck is NBC doing blowing off February sweeps and not showing signs of ANY coherent strategy to attract viewers? Why the random hiatuses when they have nothing in the pipeline to fill up that empty time and attract viewers??

Either the network heads are less competent than your average McDonald's employee or they're deliberately trying to sink the network for some reason.

Revolution has only 10 episodes left of a 20 episode order this year. If they would have run it for the 4 weeks in February, that would have left them with only 6 more new episodes to span the next 12 weeks to make it through May sweeps.

Actually, I was talking about the IGN podcast Channel Surfing. They just seem to talk about the kinds of shows I watch. Stuff on HBO, Showtime, sitcoms, etc... There isn't any talk of procedurals or reality or whatever else I'm not into.

I also like their movie podcast Keepin it Reel. There again they talk about movies I watch, like super heroes and action and etc...

IGN is probably aimed at a younger audience and I have a child-like mind when it comes to TV and movies.

I'll give that Firewall podcast a try. I listen to way too many video game and tech podcasts. I could use more TV and movie podcasts.

USA managed to carve a niche for itself by having fun, fairly fluffly programing that people could watch during these "dead" zones. Occasionally, the networks have experimented with putting a show on in these slots to get attention and then moving it to the "regular" schedule once it's established (Fox did this with The O.C. and Glee both. I think WB does it pretty regularly, but I don't follow any shows on the WB well enough to say for certain that this is the case. ) But realistically, even if NBC tried to compete with USA at this point, quite frankly, USA has better programming.

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Two comments:

1. The WB hasn't existed for several years.

2. NBC and USA are both part of the NBCUniversal family, owned by Comcast.

Revolution has only 10 episodes left of a 20 episode order this year. If they would have run it for the 4 weeks in February, that would have left them with only 6 more new episodes to span the next 12 weeks to make it through May sweeps.

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Two comments:

1. Where did you hear it's only a 20-episode order? Even if that were the original plan, it would surprise me if NBC didn't order more episodes after the show did so well at the beginning of the fall.

2. All the other networks are able to take 22 episodes and manage to show them during all three in-season sweeps periods. Even if Revolution only has 20 episodes, NBC still should have been able to find a way to air some episodes during both February and May sweeps.

TV is going away from the 22 episode season spread over 4 sweeps periods. People just don't watch reruns anymore.

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What does this have to do with the discussion we're having? Nobody is advocating that NBC should be airing reruns of their programs. And you're welcome to think that sweeps periods don't matter anymore, but you'd be dead wrong. They're still very important to the networks, the affiliates, and the advertisers. And it's a huge black eye on NBC that they just had the worst network sweeps period in history.

No, but the networks have NOT adjusted to the business model of DVRs and on-demand. All of them are struggling with the economics of it and most of them are desperately trying to avoid making any changes to the broadcast model that has served them so well for decades.

I can't say that NBC's woes are reflective of this as their model seems to show the business acumen of a crackhead, but NBC is failing miserably at the traditional model and not, for example, failing in innovative efforts to move away from that model.